When Jesus said:
The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. (Mark 2:27)
He meant that the Sabbath, being part of the Torah, implies that in its entirety, the Torah was therefore made for man, and not man for the Torah. The LORD gave His people the Torah on Mount Sinai after He already saved them from the enemy. In the same way, the LORD has given us His manual for how to follow Him, after we have already been saved by the blood of Christ, and not for this salvation. The LORD never came to the Israelites in Egypt and said “I’ll make this covenant with you: Should you faithfully observe Passover for three years consecutively, then I’ll destroy Pharaoh’s army and rescue you from slavery.” No. The LORD, out of His grace and mercy, first gave them the gift of salvation, then instructed them how to live righteously, since He knew they were incapable of doing so on their own.
“Torah” in Hebrew actually means “instructions,” not “law.” The whole Torah and all of the instructions (not law) that are written were made for us, for our benefit. Because the LORD loves us so deeply, He gave us the Torah as a gift. That is why it is written:
So, the Torah is Holy; that is, the commandments is holy, just and good. (Romans 7:12)
We were never created to be the instruction’s slaves. This is ludicrous. They were instead made by Father to help us “be holy, because I am holy.” (1 Peter 1:16)
So, we follow the “law” out of a deep love for our Father and desire for His presence. We love Who He is and what He isn’t. He is the deepest desire of our heart (which has been replaced with the heart of Christ by His blood). Our goal as Christians is to experience more and more of Him every day. We don’t obey Torah because doing certain things will make Him love us more, but because He already loves us more than we can ever comprehend. Every time the Torah exposes sin in our hearts,
because the law brings wrath. And where there is no law there is no transgression, (Romans 4:15)
we are reminded of that precious love He had for “the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). By ignoring the Torah, we rob ourselves of its gift. However, by connecting every chapter and every verse from the Torah to the work of the Son, we are constantly reminded of His love for us regardless of the sin exposed by it. He is a loving and forgiving Father who so wanted closeness with us despite our condition that He sent Himself to die for our atonement so that there could be access to Him through Jesus. The Torah is the light of the LORD shining Himself on every soul, calling them out of the masses of crowds, exposing every sin in their heart for what it is, with the echo of Him saying “I still want you. What do you say?” It exposes our need for Christ, and the grace of Father. Without it, we miss the point of the Gospel. When we finally understand this point, we then want give up our lives from the ways of this world unto the ways of Father in response to that love from the LORD and His salvation that came when He gave up His own.
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